Recruitment Drive: Black Operations
by bissek
Summary: Based on the series by Afalstein. Mireille was only planning to go window shopping. Then she found herself followed by an agent of the most notorious spy agency in the world and given an unusual offer.
1. Chapter 1

Mireille was being followed. The streets of Paris weren't all that crowded at this time of day, and so the Asian woman that was tailing her stood out. Unfortunately, shaking her wasn't as easy. She'd been working on it for half an hour, and the woman was still following her.

Since the woman wasn't doing anything but following, Mireille figured that she was waiting for a chance for the two of them to be alone before acting. She could work with that. Mireille changed her totally random course into a wandering route that would take her back to her apartment, where her partner would be waiting. The mystery woman was undoubtedly another Soldat assassin, and it wasn't as if they didn't already know her home address.

She had hoped that Les Soldats had given up on trying to kill them after the death of Altena, but it seemed that they had no intention of abandoning their policy of killing anyone who knowingly defied them. As Mireille's journey changed from an attempt to shake her pursuer to an attempt to lure her pursuer into a trap that looked like an attempt to shake a pursuer, she tried to figure out whether or not it would be practical to try to take this one alive for questioning. Maybe this one would know how to find someone high enough up in the organization that she and Kirika to coerce into rescinding the death mark. Being perpetually stalked was stressful, even for professional killers.

Mireille was not particularly surprised when the mystery woman approached her as she reached for the door to her apartment.

"Mireille Bouquet?" She asked.

With one hand, Mireille shoved open the door. Then she spun and grabbed the woman with the other, throwing her inside. As the woman rolled to her feet, Mireille pulled her gun out of her purse. As she trained it on her opponent, the woman charged at her. Before Mireille could get off a shot, she was on her back with her own gun in her face.

But by that time her partner was aware of the threat and moving as well. A well-aimed fork flew through the air and struck the woman's hand at a nerve center, forcing her to drop the weapon. Taking advantage of the opening, Mireille knocked the woman's feet out from under her. As the gun slid too far away for either of them to use, the two attacked each other hand to hand.

Unlike her partner, who could and frequently did fight with just about anything that came to hand, Mireille was primarily trained to use a pistol. Her opponent, on the other hand, was clearly an expert in close combat. It wasn't long before she found herself forced to the ground in a rather uncomfortable arm lock. But before the assassin could take advantage of this, a gun was pressed to her head.

"Let her go," Kirika ordered.

"Look down," The woman countered.

Mireille turned her head to the window. From across the street she could see a figure pointing a sniper rifle. Even from her position on the floor she could easily tell that it was aimed at her partner's chest.

"Are going to have to kill each other, or are you willing to accept that I came here to talk, not to fight?"

* * *

The three women sat around the pool table that Mireille used as a work desk holding cups of tea.

"So tell me, Agent May, what brings you here? I would think that given current events, what was left of SHIELD would be busy hiding, rather than trying to track down people like us." Mireille inquired, trying to not think about the fact that the Triplett person that May had talked to over the radio after the fight broke up was almost certainly still watching them and ready to shoot her or Kirika if the discussion went downhill.

"If were interested in shutting you down, we could have just left an anonymous tip giving away your identities to Interpol. I'm here for business reasons." May pulled a folder out of her jacket.

"We know a great deal about you, Miss Bouquet, from your childhood as the daughter of Corsica's most notorious crime boss to your setting up as a contract assassin after your family was wiped out by parties unknown. We know less about your partner, and everything we do know I suspect is wrong, seeing as the public record states that Kirika Yumura is the only child of two people who don't exist who work for a company that doesn't exist in a town that doesn't exist. Even with some of the best data analysis people in the world looking, we couldn't find the real records."

"They don't exist, and even if they did, there wouldn't be much in them." Kirika admitted.

"Another girl with no past. Is there a club or something?" May muttered under her breath, then returned to the matter at hand. "The interesting thing is that going over all the presumed and confirmed kills by the assassin team known as Noir, your choice of targets is noteworthy. Most of your kills are terrorists, war criminals, corrupt officials, and major figures in organized crime. The rest are all people who picked fights with you and lost. In two cases you even took out people that SHIELD was getting ready to deal with ourselves when you killed them. A pity we can't tell Agent Blake that the warlord he was assembling a massive task force to take down was killed by two girls." Her mouth quirked up at the thought of the potential embarrassment to an apparently disliked coworker.

"So what does this mean for us?" Mireille asked.

"Most of the people who were working for SHIELD this time last year are either dead, working for HYDRA, left after HYDRA came into the open, or are stuck in committee meetings over everything SHIELD has been up to for the past seventy years in light of the revelations about HYDRA for the indefinite future. Those of us who are left are seriously short-handed. We could use the skills of a team that can single-handedly wipe out an entire army platoon once we've identified key figures in HYDRA to strike against."

Mireille and Kirika exchanged glances. They hadn't been expecting a job offer. "And you see nothing wrong with hiring professional killers for this?" Mireille asked.

"You'd hardly be the first people with a checkered past to join. Hell, compared to Romanov your records are squeaky clean. In the old days we might have tried recruiting you outright. Unfortunately, your skill sets are a little too focused for the wide variety of missions we need, and we can't train you up at the moment - Most of the instructors at the Operations Academy were killed during the attempted HYDRA takeover, the rest of them are stuck in committee hearings, and those of us in the field are too busy running ops to train anyone. What we're proposing right now is contract work to capture or eliminate HYDRA leaders once we figure out who they are and where they're operating from. Nothing that you haven't been doing already, sometimes on the behalf of governments seeking plausible deniability for the operation."

Kirika and Mireille stepped aside to discuss the offer. After about twenty minutes of quiet debate, the two came to a conclusion. As the two returned to where May was waiting, Mireille grabbed some papers.

"I think we might be able to come to some arrangement, but first," Mireille laid the papers on the pool table. "What do you know of a conspiracy known as Les Soldats?"

* * *

A/N: Similar to Recruitment Drive: Divisions, this started when I PMed Afalstein asking if he was planning to include Noir in the list of series and him suggesting that I write something up myself. I figured that Kirika and Mireille would be good people to have on SHIELD's side when the time came to take the offensive, and Les Soldats would be the kind of thing that SHIELD is supposed to be dealing with.

The situations that Noir handled that SHIELD had been planning to are Noir episodes 4 (A 'security' company that specialized in helping their clients launch coups) and 7 (An African warlord).


	2. Chapter 2

Mireille looked at the decoded email. It looked like SHIELD had a contract for them.

"Kirika?" She called. "We have a job."

After her partner was seated next to her, Mireille brought up the picture attached to the message.

"General Solohob. Formerly of the KGB, now a leading figure in the Russian mob. We've been tasked to bring him in for questioning about some of the people he does business with, preferably without anyone realizing who is really behind his capture."

"Where can we find him?" Kirika asked.

"Our client doesn't know, beyond that he's based somewhere in Moscow. Let's see if there's anything else in the profile that might help us track him down."

The two women flipped through the dossier. Name, height, weight, age, a rough overview of his military career, most of the information was unimportant to their mission. Then they came to a couple pieces of information that would be useful - a personal rivalry and a hobby. Put them together, and the mission was workable.

"We don't have to find him," Mireille smiled. "He's going to invite us in."

* * *

A week later, Mireille was lounging in the bar of a restaurant in Moscow waiting for her target to arrive. Solohob was apparently fond of blondes, and in the habit of having his aide Selnikov procure women for him. As Selnikov was fond of this restaurant, hopefully he would spot her and take the bait.

She was in luck. Selnikov was among the customers at the restaurant that night. After his meal, he wandered over to the bar, where between drinks he looked over Mireille and the rather revealing dress she was wearing and drew the conclusion she wanted him to make.

"Are you interested in going to a party?" He asked, "I have a friend who'd love to make your acquaintance."

"I'd be delighted."

After getting into Selnikov's car, she sent a quick text message to Kirika letting her know that the job was on, followed by a second text when they reached their destination saying where she was - a factory near the edge of town.

When she was taken to meet the General, she saw that he was in a meeting with two people. One of them - a large ex-soldier type who had replaced his right hand with a large spiked mace and was talking into a cell phone - was clearly a bodyguard. The other looked familiar to her.

After a few moments, Mireille realized who he was. Don Vincente Fortunato, a crime boss her father had once dealt with on occasion. Fortunately, it seemed that the old man didn't recognize her as the daughter of a long deceased business partner. Since Mireille had been seven the last time they had met, she supposed that wasn't really surprising.

"Magnificent," The general said as he looked her over. "Unfortunately, business must come before pleasure. Please take her to the other room until I am finished here."

As Selinkov lead her away, Mireille heard the man with the mace say "Something went wrong with the Bauer job, boss." before passing out of earshot. She was then lead to a break room used by some of the general's off-duty men and excused himself to deal with other business elsewhere in the city. Mireille patiently waited and listened to them gossip until a vibration from her cell phone told her that Kirika was in position.

"It's getting rather dull just sitting here," She said coyly as she played with one of the straps on her dress. "Isn't there something more fun we could be doing?"

The guards tried their best to maintain straight faces, no doubt knowing how much trouble they would get in if the general caught them toying with his plaything without permission.

Mireille edged closer to one of the guards and placed her hand on his cheek. "I bet you have some impressive equipment," She purred as her hand slowly trailed down his body.

"I can think of all sorts of things I can do with it," Her hand settled on his waist.

"Like this, for example." Her hand closed on his pistol, which she drew in one smooth movement as she spun and opened fire on the other men in the room.

* * *

Kirika walked up to the old factory with her hands in the pockets of her coat. The two men at the gate eyed her suspiciously, no doubt wondering why someone would go for a stroll in this part of the city. Before they could demand that she explain what she was doing there, she pressed a button in each of the pockets. The blades of the spring-loaded knives she had been gripping shot through the fabric and into the throats of the guards. Sending a call to Mireille's cellphone to signal the attack, Kirika made her way into the building.

Sandwiched between two foes, the defenders separating the two assassins were quickly eliminated. After they hooked up, they quickly tracked the general down to a loading dock filled with goods that he was planning to either buy or sell to the man he was with.

Even if the professional criminals that Noir had been sent after didn't know who they were, they clearly understood what they were. Solohob called for more of his men while the other man ordered his bodyguard to attack.

As Mireille covered one of the entrances that Solohob's men could arrive by, the man who was aptly named Mace charged at Kirika, the namesake weapon grafted to his wrist swinging. Kirika easily dodged the first two swings, but during the third, something sprayed out of the prosthetic into her eyes, and she staggered back in pain, blinded. The only thing that kept Mace from smashing her head in before she could recover was Mireille hurriedly emptying a full clip at him, forcing the man to fall back.

A group of men entered the room through a side entrance. Kirika heard one of them note her incapacitation. Aiming for the sound of his voice, she gunned him down. The others all charged at her, making nice, loud footsteps as they went. Yes, she was in pain. Yes, she was blinded. But she had been trained to be able to resist pain. She had been trained to be able to aim a gun using her hearing rather than her sight. The faster they tried to get to her, the easier it was for her to target them.

As the last of that group of men fell, Kirika heard a strange noise from the direction Mace had been in. She leapt aside on pure instinct as something large and fast rushed past her. Rolling to a kneeling position, she opened fire in the direction of the original noise, and was rewarded with a cry of pain.

"Are you alright, Kirika?" Mireille's voice called out. "I've got Solohob and Fortunato. Everyone else is down."

"Mace sprayed something in my eyes. I can't see anything beyond blurs."

"Alright, let me make sure these two can't make a break for it and then I'll help you to the car. Once we make it to the safehouse we can wash your eyes out. In the meantime, if you hear anyone trying to make a run for it, shoot them."

Apparently the knowledge that Kirika had been shooting blind for most of the fight terrified their prisoners into compliance, because they didn't try to run. But as they were loaded into a car, General Solohob did make one gesture of defiance.

"Do you think you can get away with this? Once the rest of my men learn what happened here, they will hunt you down and destroy you."

Mireille laughed, "What makes you think they'll be coming after us?"

* * *

Selnikov looked at the carnage. Only three people were missing from the slaughter: The general, his customer, and the prostitute. And since there was no reason why the latter would have been dragged away with the other two, she was almost certainly a spy sent to find the General and call in an attack. But for who?

Then he saw that two of the bodies had not been killed with a gun. Buried in their throats were the blades of a pair of spring-loaded Spetsnaz combat knives. And most of the Spetsnaz in the Russian Mob were employed by the general's old enemy Lermontov.

Selnikov called in the rest of Solohob's organization. If Lermontov wanted war, he was going to get it.

* * *

The day after Mireille reported the successful completion of their mission, SHIELD sent someone to collect their prisoners and what Mireille had been able to loot from Solohob's office.

"I've heard a lot about you, General," Natasha Romanov said. "We have a great deal to talk about." Then she turned to Fortunato. "And who is this?"

"His name's Vincente Fortunato." Mireille responded. "He's the head of a mid-ranked crime family in North America. He was trying to conclude a business deal with the general when we arrived."

"Fortunato... I think they might be on the list of families suspected to be part of the Maggia. Nice work.

"I believe you two need to be trained up in a few skills before you can be considered proper agents. Now seems like a good time to start that training." The Black Widow smiled coldly at the prisoners. "Today we'll be having a practical lesson in Interrogation 101."

* * *

Agent Koenig wrote down Agent Romanov's report and headed to the Director's office.

"We just got an update from Moscow, sir." He reported. "She's begun the interrogation process on both prisoners - in addition to the general, Noir also managed to capture a Maggia chieftain from New York as well - but it will take a while before we get all the answers we need.

"Miss Bouquet also reported overhearing two things that might be of interest. First, the New York chieftain apparently tried some action against someone named Bauer, an action which apparently failed. Second, some of Solohob's men mentioned their boss trying to conclude a deal with the Hoxha organization in Albania. That might be connected with what happened to Agent Mills.

"We also got a message from Agent Finch. Apparently the laptop seized during the raid doesn't contain any real information about either organization's operations, but it does contain banking information that was going to be used for a transaction that Noir interrupted. Apparently he thinks he can siphon money out of those accounts and into our own, though it might take some time to launder it sufficiently to avoid Samaritan's notice. Does he have permission to proceed?"

Director Coulson smiled. It looked like their money troubles were about to go away for a while. "Permission granted."

* * *

A/N: Solohob and Lermentov are figures in the Russian Mob who were mentioned by name during the interrogation scene in The Avengers but never appeared. Vincente Fortunato and Gideon Mace are Maggia figures from the comics.


End file.
